Flying Toast

The toastite is a 1950 era device for making toasted sandwiches in the shape of flying saucers. As kids we loved it when my Mom made them, they were cool looking and tasted good to boot! I found the original one we used in the 60's during a rummage thru my parents house about 10 years ago. After years of disuse in my kitchen cabinet I spotted it last summer. I thought I would make some for my kids and tell them stories of the good old days.

"Dad, why is it like that?"
"It is a flying saucer Jake, go ahead and eat it"
"Can you fly it Dad?"
"Sure Jake, we can get motors to make almost anything fly"
"I want to see it fly Dad"
"No Jake, you said you wanted salami in it. That is not an airworthy material. Just eat it"
" But Dad, you said you can make them fly"
"Ok Jake eat that one and Ill make another one that can fly" (This shows that you really have to think about what you say to small children to avoid later issues)

An early prototype saucer after ground testing the recovery system . (This one has a tuna filling) I threw it and Jake caught it in his mouth in an attempt to prevent landing damage. The tuna filling was too heavy, it had too high a sink rate and provided dynamic loading upon landing tending to fracture the hull.	Construction of the flight model, 2 slices untrimmed enriched white bread sitting in the toastite iron. I sprayed the iron with a light coating of Pam instead of using Butter (note the golden buttery glow of the prototype) I decided that saturated fats were heavy and therefore not prone to enable efficient flight.
The motor mount is installed in the bird. The tube has a thrust block inside and a centering ring outside under the saucer to prevent fly thru of the motor mount assembly. The launch lug is glued to the motor tube. The mount is reusable if the airframe needs to be replaced, or if it gets eaten.	Jake hooking up the leads on the second flight. It flew 7 times before it hit the air-conditioning unit and cracked the airframe. First flight on a B-6-2, the others on C-6-3 motors. and some old C-5-3's. It flew great!! Straight up about 100 feet. A really great back yard bird.
Ready to go on the last flight. If you look closely you can see the 2-inch diameter centering ring under the saucer section. This and the friction of he bread kept the motor tube in place.	Finally, after it cracked and I simultaneously ran out of C motors Jake asked "can I eat it?". I said sure (after I made certain that his mother was not watching). Jake eats the evidence. Try this with any other rocket after 7 flights!

The filling was dry toast. I decided none of the available sandwich filling offered the stiffness to weight ration that a responsible aeronautical engineer would choose.